The Colonel signed something on the clipboard and then handed it to Johnson. He pressed one of the buttons on it and then also signed it before handing it back to the Colonel. Then the Colonel handed over something that looked very like a paper map. They saluted again, and then he marched back the way he had come.
Khosi watched him for a minute until he disappeared behind one of the cellblocks. There was something in his mannerisms that suggested to her that he was up to something, but he gave no real clues as to what that something might be. Although her hearing had been surgically enhanced, the rain was too heavy and the Colonel was already too far away for her to overhear anything he might say or do.
Her attention was brought back to the courtyard when Johnson climbed into the driver’s cab of the truck, while Evans began to unlock the back. It seemed that it wouldn’t be too long now before they’d be underway.
‘The whole place smells of death,’ Lara commented under her breath. She was looking about the rest of the compound, and her attention was constantly drawn to a small building positioned next to the cellblock with the big ‘20’ painted in white on it.
‘It does,’ agreed Amba.
Khosi looked away, not wanting to look Lara or Amba in the face. Personally, she couldn’t smell anything like that. The number of executions that must’ve been carried out here in the last week may well have been in the thousands, but they had all been done in a fairly sterile environment. She wondered if the Herbaht sense of smell was really strong enough to pick up the smell of those who had died or if it was in some way psychological because they knew what had happened here. She eyed the building. Perhaps it was where the executions had been carried out, but there was nothing external to point to this. It could have been anything.
Evans seemed to be struggling to open the back of the truck. He was actually shaking as if afraid or possibly excited about something, or maybe it was just the cold. There was far more happening here than met the eye, she decided to herself. The others seemed to be aware of this too, or at least Lara and Amba. The domesticated stock wouldn’t have noticed something like this if it came up to them and smacked them in the face.
Eventually Evans managed to get the door unlocked and opened, and he stood back. ‘Okay, ladies, if you would all like to board the coach and find yourselves a seat, make yourselves comfortable. Guardsman Hughes and I will be along to make sure you’re secure before we start off.’ He then seemed to look about the courtyard nervously and up at the watchtowers.
Khosi’s eyes followed his to the watchtowers and saw that the spectacle of what was happening in the courtyard hadn’t been enough to really keep the attention of the soldiers up there on duty, or perhaps the soldiers had simply felt they should do what they were being paid for. Whichever it was, Evans seemed happy and made a quick hand signal to the one called Hughes.
Hughes signaled back; then he too looked about the compound and then headed towards the small building that had so caught Lara’s attention a little earlier.
Khosi tried to watch him for a minute, but Evans hustled her into the back of the truck. She didn’t argue with him. She wanted to be away, and if they were going to leave without one of the soldiers, so much the better. Besides, the others had already climbed aboard when she turned back.
Whereas most trucks would have some sort of bench for the travelers to sit on, this truck had been outfitted especially for the transportation of Herbaht. Its normal use was probably to bring prisoners in from the police stations where the owners of the domesticated Herbaht had been handing in their pets. On each side of the truck was a line of eight seats built into the framework of the truck. Each of the seats had a pair of arm rests on which were loops to hold the passenger’s arms in position. There were two more loops to hold the legs still and a further brace that stretched across the chair under where the arms would go; this held the torso in place. It seemed that the soldiers didn’t want their prisoners moving about too much during the journey.
Being the last to climb aboard, Khosi had to take a seat nearest the doors. Not that she minded, as this allowed her to be closer to her potential escape route. She glared at each of the others in the truck. She couldn’t help but feel hatred for them. It was in her very being. She also wanted to ascertain where in the truck Lara had found a seat. Typical—she was right at the front of the truck, opposite that Amba creature. All the advantage of sitting so close to the doors was lost because she would still have to go to the front to fetch her quarry.
Then Guardsman Hughes reappeared at the rear of the truck and entered, bringing yet another Herbaht with him. She was placed in the chair opposite Khosi and strapped in.
Khosi sighed again. Now there were eleven Herbaht to worry about, and who was this newcomer? She hadn’t been in the cell with the rest of them. Khosi closed her eyes while she tried to think of any excuse why this new girl might have been included in this little excursion.
As she sat with her eyes closed, she heard the rear doors of the truck being closed, and almost immediately the smell in the back of the truck seemed to get worse. It was a lot more stuffy here than she remembered it being in the cell, and she couldn’t inch herself away from the others as she had been able to there. There were two free seats nearer the door than the one she had taken, and she began to consider moving to one of them and away from the others. It was too late, though. The soldiers were already moving along the line and fastening everyone’s loops into position for the trip.
Once she was fastened into her seat she decided to test the strength of the loops. First her hands… Nope, she couldn’t break them free of their moorings. Oh well, no problem. When the time to escape was upon her she would break them easily with a little help from the serum.
The soldier called Hughes, having finished fastening his half of the prisoners into their seats, returned to the rear doors and took the empty seat nearest the rear doors on the side of the truck opposite where Khosi was sitting. Evans, on the other hand, stayed at the front end of the truck and rapped on the partition to let the driver know everything was secure and they could go.
Khosi sized up the situation. She had expected them both to guard the Herbaht nearest the doors, since that was the only way out of the truck. With one soldier at either end of the vehicle, however, attacking them at the same time would be a little more awkward. She would have to take full advantage of the speed boost the serum would give her to stand any real chance. This was a shame, because although she had centered most of her escape plans on the serum, there had always been the underlying hope that she wouldn’t really have to use it. That one-in-four chance of instant death could be quite daunting.
The truck jerked into life. It started with a few maneuvers that felt as if the vehicle was turning round. A weird sort of thrumming filled the air, and Khosi looked around for the source but saw nothing. She worried that maybe they were intending to knock their charges out for the journey, and where would her escape be then? But no, neither of the soldiers had gone for any sort of mask to filter out gas, nor did they look worried.
Slowly the thrumming resolved itself into a sort of music that seemed to be emanating from the driver’s cab. Khosi closed her eyes and relaxed again. Her mind was set that she was definitely going to escape sometime during this journey, but she would wait until they were a little further away from the Cattery. Give it ten minutes, maybe fifteen, and then she would make her move.
Then the truck stopped. Only a few seconds seemed to have passed since Khosi had closed her eyes. Had she fallen asleep and missed most of the journey? She tried to sit bolt upright but was stopped by the restraint across her torso.
‘What’s happened? Have we arrived?’ she asked of Hughes. She tried to look pitiful.
Hughes seemed to be restraining a laugh as he spoke: ‘We haven’t left yet; we’re just waiting to be let through the gates.’
Khosi nodded with relief and settled back. Despite the fact that she and the creature in the seat next to her, Ruby,
had separate arm rests, and despite their arms being held tightly in place, she was beginning to feel a little crowded by her neighbor. Ruby, by contrast, seemed to be ignoring her, not that Khosi could blame her. Instead she was trying to strike up a conversation with one of the two Herbaht named Stripy whom she sat opposite.
‘Where do you think they’re taking us?’ Stripy asked of Ruby.
‘I don’t know,’ Ruby replied, ‘somewhere more secure than they had us, I’d guess!’
‘More secure than the Cattery?’ Stripy seemed surprised.
Khosi was already fed up with the conversation between the two. Couldn’t they find anything more interesting to talk about? She had hoped the trip would be spent pretty much in silence, but small conversations seemed to be breaking out all around the truck, and the soldiers were doing nothing to shut them up. She looked at each of the Herbaht she could see from where she was sitting in turn. Lara at the far end seemed to be deep in thought. Everyone else seemed to be engaged in a conversation with one of the others.
Stripy turned to the newcomer and asked, ‘So why are you here?’
‘What’s your name?’ Ruby added to that.
The newcomer looked first at Stripy and then to the soldier called Hughes. Then she looked across at Ruby and finally answered, ‘I’m called Amba.’
Khosi blinked at this. Another Amba? She didn’t think it was likely to be that popular a name. She hadn’t seen how Amba spelt her name, but in her research, the word amber was simply a word that meant a color something akin to orange or yellow and a name given to some sort of petrified tree sap. Why would anyone name their child after a color, let alone two parents with the same idea?
The sound of a door slamming near the front of the vehicle was followed a few seconds later by the truck lurching back into life. They were off at last.
Hughes seemed to be keeping a careful eye on the conversation when it involved the newcomer to the truck, and this newcomer seemed to be very much aware of his eyes on her. She answered any questions very carefully and seemed to ignore more than half of them. If it wasn’t for the fact that Khosi felt she was ignoring those questions because of the soldier’s ever-present attention, she might have felt respect for this new Amba. Khosi herself had ignored both every question any Herbaht had thrown at her and as many of the questions the humans had asked as she had been able. Let them think of her as anti-social; she’d show them soon enough that she had her own very good reasons.
Having no way to tell the passage of time, she would have to estimate it as best she could. Ten minutes and she would make her break. She began to count at a slow yet steady pace, unsure if the intervals were right for seconds or not. It didn’t really matter, though, so long as they were a good distance from the Cattery and possible reinforcements when she tried to break free.
‘One, two, three, four…’ The road was bumpy, and she bounced in the chair a lot. She worried about the vehicle’s stability. Surely these vehicles were fitted with inertial dampeners. If they weren’t working properly, as they didn’t seem to be, what else might be broken?
‘Ninety-four, ninety-five, ninety-six…’ The truck was moving at a fair speed now and didn’t seem to slow down too much for any corners it was taking. If the passengers hadn’t been locked into their seats they might have been thrown about mercilessly. At least the road seemed a lot smoother now. She hoped that the road leading to their new destination wasn’t as badly maintained as the earlier road. Then she chastised herself for even imagining that it should be an issue; after all, she was planning on leaving long before the truck got that far.
‘Four hundred and sixty-seven, four hundred and sixty-eight, four hundred and sixty-nine…’ As her count was approaching eight minutes, the truck swerved onto what felt like a gravel road with a squeal, and then the thing came to a halt.
Her count stopped. The truck had stopped, and she might not have reached six hundred yet, but it occurred to her that it would be a lot easier to get out of a stopped vehicle than one that was still moving. But why had they stopped? What might be waiting for her when she stepped out of the truck? Could they be at their destination already?
Her mind raced. If they had arrived, they would be putting her into a cell again, and she would be back to square one. No, she had to try and escape now. If she failed, at least she would have tried. With luck, those awaiting the truck’s arrival hadn’t yet gotten in position to greet them properly. It was unlikely. They were supposed to be the best the humans had to offer. Nevertheless, time was ticking, and the longer she waited the worse the odds got.
Her tongue found the serum-filled tooth again, and then she broke it. Everything literally started to move in slow motion. She paused for a moment; there was no heart attack. She had survived. That might still change as she exerted herself, but she had lived through the first hurdle.
With the heightened strength the serum gave her, she broke free from the restraining straps as if she had been held into place by strips of paper. Even as she was climbing out of her seat, she threw a kick at the soldier called Hughes. He started to slump in his seat, at the very least unconscious, but with the energy she’d put into her kick and considering where she had aimed the kick, he was probably dead.
The second soldier, Evans, was still positioned near the front of the truck, and he was fast; even in his apparent slow-motioned state he had managed to raise his laser rifle and aim it at her in the time it had taken her to reach him. She broke his neck easily, and in one swift move took both the weapon and a small radio that he had about his person.
Lara seemed to be shouting something, but she was talking too slowly to make any sense. It didn’t matter; unless Lara was divulging the address of her mother, Khosi really didn’t care for anything she might have to say.
Khosi leveled the laser rifle at Mazaline, the Herbaht who was sitting next to Lara; she only needed Lara and intended to wipe the others out before leaving with her prey. Nothing happened! She threw the laser down with disgust. Either the soldiers had been issued with empty weapons or they were D.N.A. coded. Intelligence had insisted that any soldiers, including the Elite that she was likely to meet, wouldn’t have such weapons. ‘All you’ll come across are primitive laser rifles which can be used by anyone who gets their hands on them,’ they had said. Well, their intelligence was obviously wrong.
She pulled the restraints that held Lara in place loose and threw her over her shoulder. With Lara moving at approximately a tenth of her speed, Khosi felt this was the only way. Anything else would be a waste of the serum.
Lara was still screaming something, but she was still moving far too slowly to make any sense.
Khosi hesitated to move to the rear doors. The one called Amba who had been so friendly towards Lara in the cell sat right there, directly opposite where Lara had been. She was both sealed in and helpless. Khosi might not be able to kill all the Herbaht in the truck, but she had developed a special hatred for Lara and her friend Amba. She only needed Lara alive. Khosi threw an unguided kick as she turned and headed back towards the doors. There was a satisfying crack behind her as something in Amba snapped.
Time and the serum were running out; things were beginning to correlate a little more. She smashed open the rear doors of the truck with a kick that she felt through her body and which deadened her foot a bit.
Outside the truck were two more humans. One of them, the one called Johnson, seemed to be in the process of unlocking the rear of the truck. His expression had already moved to surprise, and he was moving for his weapon. Khosi stopped him by jumping out of the truck with Lara still resting on her shoulders and aiming a chop at his throat, crushing his wind pipe. The second one, someone she had never seen before, turned suddenly and began to run. She could catch him if she wanted, but he wasn’t armed and was unlikely to be much of a threat. She felt it more important to get into the cover of the trees before the humans brought in reinforcements who, she had convinced herself, would be along at any minute.
She knew the serum couldn’t last much longer. She was already feeling tired, and Lara was actually beginning to make sense, except that now she seemed to just be screaming and not actually trying to say anything while trying to struggle herself free. She was also beginning to feel a lot heavier.
Khosi limped, her leg still hurting from kicking open the truck’s door. She passed a couple of very old-looking buildings and started into the outlying foliage of the forest, her bare feet squelching in the wet mud. It was here that she felt she could no longer carry Lara over her shoulders. She put her down and began to stagger more and more as she led her struggling prey deeper into the forest’s interior.
Holding Lara with one hand, she tried to reprogram the radio she had taken from Evans. It wasn’t easy, especially with her mind trying to insist she should be sleeping and refusing to concentrate. Eventually she was satisfied, though as she used it she couldn’t help worrying about who else might pick up the message if she hadn’t reprogrammed it properly.
‘Hello,’ Khosi said sleepily in her own tongue.
Lara gave her a funny look that she totally ignored. Lara had probably never heard the language Khosi was now speaking ever used before.
‘Control here,’ came a reply in the same language.
‘This is Agent Linsiokhosi; I need a pickup. I don’t know where I am, so home in on this signal. Please hurry; I’m fast losing consciousness, and I don’t want to lose my prey.’
‘Acknowledged,’ the voice replied. ‘A shuttle is on its way to you. Please keep the channel open so we can track you through it.’
‘Sure,’ Khosi said. She put the radio back into her rags and tried to drag Lara even deeper into the forest. She was looking for a clearing big enough for the shuttle to land in. If it was necessary, the shuttle could fell some of the trees, but it would be better all-around if they didn’t have to.
It was no good, though; the serum had worn off, and she was falling asleep on her feet. She couldn’t have called when she was under the influence of the serum because the extra speed would’ve meant she would’ve been unintelligible, and before that, of course, she hadn’t had a radio to call with.
London Wild Page 47